'LIE OR DIE' -- Aftermath of a Murder; Justice, Safety and the System: A Witness Is Slain in Brooklyn

Published: July 6, 2003

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Shortly after Doughboy was killed, Bobby Gibson, working with an assistant district attorney named Javier A. Solano, testified before the grand jury that indicted Wesley Sykes as the schoolyard gunman.

Thus, months later, Bobby's mother said, when her son sought protection before testifying against Wesley Sykes in open court, he naturally turned to the Brooklyn district attorney's office. Corey Brown, in fact, said Bobby had told prosecutors ''everything.''

But both Ms. Gibson and Corey Brown say nothing was done. Ms. Gibson said Bobby had told her the prosecutors changed the subject when he asked for protection. She said that Bobby asked for an escort to and from the district attorney's office as the trial neared. She said they called him a taxi.

In interviews, Mr. Solano said he did not remember any witnesses raising specific concerns about intimidation. ''If someone witnesses a murder,'' he said, ''everyone always has concerns.''

The record shows, though, that Mr. Solano at least was aware that his witnesses did not want to be known to, or bothered by, people working with Wesley Sykes's defense.

On April 23, 2002, with the trial two months off, Mr. Solano wrote a letter to Mr. Sykes's lawyer. ''They have indicated to me,'' he wrote of his witnesses, ''that they would rather keep their names confidential.'' Recently, Mr. Solano said in an interview that the letter was routine, reflecting nothing more than a standard reluctance to talk to defense lawyers.

Still, one of the girls testified that roughly a month after Mr. Solano wrote his letter, she went to him and tried to back out of testifying. She went because she was afraid, she said, but she was vague about how much she had told Mr. Solano.

If prosecutors had ever heard Turf's name mentioned, they would have had plenty of reasons to be concerned.

Turf had been prosecuted repeatedly in Brooklyn. He was the prime suspect in the open 1999 murder case. And the ties between Turf and Wesley Sykes, half brothers, were easy to establish. They had lived together, and their family, police say, was known to Brooklyn law enforcement because of repeated drug investigations. Wesley, in fact, had once posted bail for Turf.

In the end, though, Bobby Gibson lost his only truly familiar contact with the prosecutor's office on the eve of trial. On June 26, the day before jury selection, the district attorney's office shifted the case from Mr. Solano and gave it to another prosecutor, Stephen J. Murphy. Mr. Solano had another murder case on his schedule.

Mr. Murphy, 29, had never worked on the schoolyard case before that day, prosecutors say. In a statement read to a reporter by a spokesman for the office, Mr. Murphy said that in his meeting with Bobby Gibson, he heard no mention of threats or fear. ''Not one word,'' the statement said.

In fact, Jerry Schmetterer, the spokesman, said that none of the witnesses had mentioned any threats to any prosecutor. Prosecutors in the office said Bobby's mother's claims were confused, and driven by a desire to win a financial judgment.

Bobby slept those last nights in his grandmother's cramped apartment in Crown Heights. His mother, a former school aide living on disability benefits, had given up her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant to move in with her mother.

In an interview recently, Bobby's mother, seated at her mother's kitchen table, said Bobby was edgy as the trial neared.

''You don't know how serious this is,'' she recalled him saying.

Accounts Are Changed

The trial was three weeks away. Wesley Sykes's lawyer, Michael Warren, had an unusual visitor for a Sunday afternoon. He was in his office, on the first floor of his home on Washington Avenue in Brooklyn. It was June 9, 2002, about 4:30 p.m.

The visitor was Mookie, one of the schoolyard girls and one of the prosecution's main witnesses. Mr. Warren turned on a tape recorder and began asking questions about the killing. But first he mentioned where the interview was taking place. He mentioned the time and date. He might need to play the tape in court.

When tape-recording witnesses, it is often the practice of lawyers and law enforcement officers to say who is in the room. Neither Mr. Warren nor anyone else on the tapes ever mentioned that Turf was there.

It was Turf, the three girls later said, who had taken them to Mr. Warren's office, and had sat next to them. He knew what they would now say, the girls testified, because he had scripted it for them.

How Mr. Warren came to represent Wesley Sykes is not clear.

Mr. Warren gained prominence with such clients as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the terror mastermind. And he has most recently been in the spotlight as a lawyer for the men whose convictions were vacated in the Central Park jogger case. In that case, he argued that detectives had coerced false confessions from the young men.

It is clear Mr. Warren knew Turf, and in a recent interview Mr. Warren said he had represented him once before. The girls said Turf referred to Mr. Warren as his lawyer.

Mr. Warren did say that he had no inkling that Turf was a member of the Bloods. He said he had no reason to believe that the visits from the girls had been motivated by anything but their desire to tell the truth. A reporter heard the tapes this spring.